


War of hearts

by aredburn



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers for Episode 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 13:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11852490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aredburn/pseuds/aredburn
Summary: She finds her heart on a boat. Ficlet post episode 6.





	War of hearts

His scars are etched behind her eyelids.

She sleeps in strange intervals, in between thoughts of the rude marks on his ivory chest and the pain swallowing what is left of her heart. The emptiness spreading inside her presses against her ribcage, screeching to get out. She dreams of red; blood and death.

When she’s awake she hovers around his cabin, watches him sleep; the emptiness inside of her is pulled to his scars as if she’s bewitched, cursed again to be tied to a man she has just started to know.

And it confuses her. It confuses her the way her heart feels. The way her body reacts. The way her breath catches somewhere between her throat and her lips and she can’t tell if it’s because she’s relieved he isn’t at the bottom of a frozen lake or because one of her children is.

So she counts his scars, traces the hard edges of skin with her eyes, tries to imagine how they came to be. Sometimes she wants to ask Ser Davos the whole truth but then she’s halfway to where he’s standing before she gives up on the notion. This is something Jon Snow should tell her if he wishes, not information coerced out of someone he trusts.

As she watches him, his name rolls around on her tongue like some foreign specialty, too bittersweet to remain for long, too addictive not to try it again. Jon Snow… Lord Snow… Jon. For a brief moment she wonders how it would be to whisper those words by his ear, in the deep of night where there is no one to witness two souls coming together in the most intimate way. How would it be for him to whisper back my queen, the ghost of his breath teasing her lips as his fingers trail fire on her skin?

When he is awake she stays away, stands outside, lets the cold bite at her skin like angry teeth as punishment. The faith he puts in her is frightening, as if he’s doubling the weight of the world on her shoulders because she realizes he’s the one person she truly doesn’t want to disappoint and is scared she will. She can’t bear the way he looks at her sometimes, all heavy hope and longing and something so deep and raw she’s too afraid to decipher.

So she stands outside wearing less than she should, letting the cold in and the fire out, pretending titles don’t mean anything when she knows it’s all that matters. Pretending she didn’t lose a child. Pretending a stupid, stubborn northern lord hadn’t broken her walls down and then built them back up with him inside them.

“You’re going to freeze to death.”

She’s startled out of her thoughts as the deck below her feet tilt and she falls just a little off balance, but she isn’t so sure it’s the sea making her feet slide closer to where he stands.

“You shouldn’t be up.”

He rests against the ship’s rail, stares off into the infinite blue surrounding them and his hair blows gently against the cold wind. His scars are now covered in heavy furs and he looks like he belongs with the winter. “It’s been several days. I needed air.”

His eyes seek hers, dark and deep as if trying to find a way into her soul not knowing he had already found it. His skin still looks a little blue around the edges and his hair is a mess of curls. She can’t look away.

“How are you feeling?” He slides closer, or maybe she does, she can’t tell. She only knows the space between them has shortened. “… my Queen.” He adds as an afterthought, a flirtatious glint to his eyes.

Angry, empty, devastated, loved. Words swirl in her head but fail to make it to her lips in a proper response. Instead she swallows back a sob, takes a deep breath and remembers she has a long fight ahead of her.

He reaches a hand out, touches her shoulder gently, in half permission to go further. She closes the no distance between them and finds herself in his arms. All pretense of strength suddenly crumbles at how flimsy and impotent titles seem now. The death of a dragon, the almost death of Jon Snow, a kingdom that may not even stand to be ruled upon.

She doesn’t cry, only buries her face in the furs, in the crook of his neck, until his skin is imprinted on hers. She’s cold and he’s warm and it’s as if they’re ice and fire and in this brief moment of raw vulnerability she doesn’t care if anyone sees Daenerys Targaryen weak, seeking comfort in the arms of a man who refuses to bend the knee.

“We’ll kill the Night King and all of his army and you’ll sit on the Iron throne. You have my word.”

What else could she expect from someone who took a knife to the heart for his people if not honor and kindness and absolute loyalty? Maybe in another universe she'd have met him as a child, one where she wasn't the last Targaryen and his father was still the ward in the North. Maybe in another universe she wouldn't have birthed dragons, but a little girl with untamed dark curls and fierce violet eyes.

She's in love with him. The realization doesn’t come with a storm, angry waves breaking on a shore; it slowly blossomed around her heart and expanded to her lungs until she found it hard to breathe; until the mere possibility of his death felt like her own.

Unconsciously, she allowed him to plant seeds inside of her heart and now she needs him to run through her veins like her very own blood.

“Thank you,” it’s not the words she had wanted to whisper by his ear during a moment of youthful foolishness, but it’s the words she wants him to hear now.

His fingers tangle in the waves of her hair as he pulls back. She doesn’t let him, tightens her arms around his waist and presses her head against his chest, just above where his scar should be carved.

For the first time she doesn’t feel alone in the world. 


End file.
